Figuring It Out
by clair beaubien
Summary: Missing scene to Swan Song: Sam's thoughts at the cemetery in Lawrence.


It took me awhile to figure it out.

All my life I've been angry. I was so angry for so long, I thought it was just a normal way of being, I thought everybody went through life feeling that way. Even when I realized it wasn't, I held onto it, used it as protection and excuses and company even when it was all the company I had. I thought it gave me strength. When Lucifer told me to keep on being angry, I thought he was goading me, provoking me, taunting me, wanting me to lose my anger because he feared it.

Was I really that stupid?

When I decided to say 'yes', and hopefully trick, push, or drag him back into his cage, I thought if I got angry enough and stayed angry enough, it would _be_ enough to overcome Lucifer.

Was I really that stupid?

I fought and kicked and scratched and battled against him and all I got for my efforts was patronizing derision and saccharine promises of a better 'life' if I'd just give in all the way. I kept fighting, and the harder I fought, the harder I _had_ to fight, just to stay conscious inside hell on two legs.

I fought him all the way to Lawrence. I fought him, standing there in the cemetery, facing down Michael, making him the same sickly sweet overtures. I fought him and fought him and fought him. I might lose, I might die, but I was going to go down swinging.

Then I heard the roar of the Impala and Dean's snide bravado – and it made me even angrier. Why was he here when there was no way of winning? Why didn't he stay out of harm's way? And Cas and Bobby had come with? How could they be so stupid?

Just to prove my point – and make me angrier – Cas got exploded and Bobby got dead.

And then Lucifer turned on Dean.

My rage turned to blind fury and I fought with every ounce and bit and speck of anger and hatred and loathing I could summon from the earliest moments of my life and the deepest part of what was left of my soul. He might kill Dean but I would fight him for the rest of eternity.

Then I heard it. Over the sickening sounds of Dean being beaten to death, I heard it. I heard Dean.

"_I'm here._ _Sammy, I'm here._"

And it hit me even harder than my fists were hitting him: he had come to die with me. Not in some stupid, corny, cheesy chick-flick suicide bid. But so that I wouldn't die alone.

Because I mattered. Whether or not my plan worked, I mattered to Dean.

_Because he loved me. _

I could feel my rage and fury ebb away. I stopped fighting. I stopped fighting Lucifer and just let myself feel that, feel Dean's love. Because if I was going to die, I was going to die _loved. _

And that's when I felt the change. When I gave up fighting, Lucifer lost some of his control over me. And I figured it out. Growing up, Dad had always said, '_fear makes you a victim, anger makes you a combatant, knowledge makes you an adversary'_ and now I _knew_.

Lucifer _wanted_ me to be angry, he _wanted_ me to fight him because that gave him strength. Anger, rage, despair, fury, hatred – he fed on those and gloried in them because that was all he knew. I think now that was all he ever knew, all he ever care about even before he rebelled. Because all he ever truly cared about was himself.

But all of my life, what my family taught me was putting other people first. Maybe we hadn't always been 100% at it, maybe we hadn't always worked from the purest motives, but we always _tried._ No pay, no thanks, no acknowledgement from the people we helped most times because most times they didn't even know that they had been helped. The world would never know I'd stopped the Apocalypse, but even so, I was going to keep trying. Not because I was destined, not because I was cursed, not because I let Lucifer out. I was going to keep trying because saving everyone else was the right thing to do.

And I _knew_ what I had to do. I had to fight on _my_ terms.

I gave up my fight, my struggle against Lucifer. I didn't need anger, I needed strength. I didn't need hatred, I needed courage. I gave up my hate and concentrated on Dean who was still whispering, "_I'm here."_ I was trapped inside Lucifer – but I wasn't _alone._ I'd never been alone. I'd been loved. I'd been protected. I'd been cherished. And I still was. I'd been a little brother. And I still was. All the strength and courage I'd ever needed I always found in those two words from Dean. '_I'm here.'_

Lucifer felt the change in me, and I could feel the change in him, weakening a little, but not enough. He fought against me trying to fill myself with every memory I had of Dean, of family, of love, trying to get me to keep fighting against him. I ignored him. I could see the damage he was doing to Dean. He might've said he was going to kill Dean slowly, but it wasn't slowly enough. If I didn't stop him soon, I'd be too late. I had to stop him.

Out of nowhere a glare of sunlight from a clouded sky leapt off the Impala and into his eyes. He was distracted for a second, just a _second_, but that's all it took and the gates opened and every memory I had and some I didn't remember having of being with Dean and laughing and teasing and fighting and working and just _being_ together flooded me and filled me and strengthened me and when I remembered Dean hugging me after he'd made his deal to go to hell to save me, Lucifer shrank back into a miserable, for-the-moment-manageable piece of repulsive malevolence. And I was back in control.

Because pure evil couldn't stand in the face of pure love.

"It's OK, Dean." I told him. I hoped he could understand me but I wasn't sure he was even conscious. How could he be after that beating? "It's gonna be OK."

I took out the rings and opened the door to the cage. I was going to do this. This was going to end _now. _

Then Michael showed up.

"Step back." He told me. "This is my destiny."

To paraphrase my brother: '_screw destiny in the face, welcome to Team Free Will'. _This was my _choice_.

I looked at Dean. He was a broken, bloody mess. One part of my brain was thinking, '_broken facial bones, broken nose, fractured jaw, cranial bleeding, damage to his eye, we need ice, we need an ER, brace his neck, lay him down, treat him for shock, take care of him…'_ But another part of my brain knew that to truly save him, to save _everybody_, I had to go into that cage.

I looked at Dean and he looked at me. He believed I was strong enough to do it, and I wasn't going to disappoint him.

The End.


End file.
